Just One of Those Days

It was just one of those days where everything seems to go wrong. No matter what you do to try and change your luck something happens. It's nothing tragic and nothing to go home still mad over but the little annoyances and inconveniences really add up and can drive you mad.

It all started as I was leaving Salzburg for Munich.

I was quite anxious to leave as I'd had enough of touristy Salzburg.

I decided to try and make the train that left in 45 minutes so I had to run back to the hostel, get my pack and get to the train station.

I made the train by 2 minutes and was quite happy until I opened up my day pack and noticed that my antipasti salad had spilled and everything in the bag smelled of olives. This was nothing compared to the later events of that night.

I arrived in Munich about 7pm and proceeded directly to the hostel which was only 3 minutes from the train station.

It was incredibly easy to find and I have this feeling that when things come too easy there must be something that's going to counteract that. Something did. The hostel was full as was the entire city of Munich because some fair was on that week and everywhere was full of school groups.

I tried not to panic and went back to the train station to find somewhere else to go to. For an hour I was looking over train schedules and my only options were Prague, Paris or Rome. Seeing as I didn't have that much money left I opted for Prague, even though I´d been there about 2 weeks earlier. I went to get money from the ‘Geldautomat' and of course, I didn't have enough left in my account. Fortunately the Munich Hauptbahnhof takes credit cards or else I would have really been stuck.

So now I had over 3 hours to kill before my train left. I put my pack in a locker and walked around the train station and the streets just outside the train station...needless to say it wasn't very interesting.

I went back in the train station and to a small kiosk to buy something.

As soon as I finished purchasing my Deutschland patch and turned around I was stopped by 3 people and one flashed his ‘polizei' badge.

The man said ‘Dein ausweis bitte' so I showed him my passport and then he got on his radio and gave my name and some other information to whoever was on the other end of the transmission.

They were all in plain clothes so I thought that at least the one guy was an undercover.

After a minute or so on the radio he handed back my passport and said ok. I asked if there was a problem and he said no everything's ok. My guess was that they were looking for someone and I fitted the description of that person.

It was at night in a German train station, I was by far the least dodgy person in there so I highly doubt they thought I was up to no good.

For the next hour and a half I sat in the little waiting area staring at the wall or at people passing by.

Finally it was time to board my train so I got my pack and went to the platform. This must have been the longest train I've ever seen in my entire life and it was going to 3 different places, Nürnberg, Dresden and Prague.

The cars nearest me all had Nürnberg signs so I walked all the way near to the front and those all said Dresden so I assumed I should be in the Nürnberg section as that's where the change would take place with part going to Prague and part going to Dresden.

Wrong.

The first ticket inspector told me I was in the wrong part of the train and needed to go to one of the first 4 cars!! I must have been in about 25 or so. At the next stop I got out and ran along the platform to move up about 5 cars. Then I started walking through the train which was entirely annoying because my pack kept hitting the walls and it was a pain going through the doors. I got to the sleeper cars and didn't know if I could proceed through there so I stayed in the care before.

Another ticket inspector came and said I needed to move 3 cars up and that I could walk through the sleepers.

So finally I got to the right place. I still wasn't completely sure even though 3 ticket inspectors told me I was in the right place. The train stopped in Nürnberg for 45 minutes to disconnect the cars going to Prague and to Dresden and I still wasn't sure I was in the right place.

Due to everything else that happened that day I could picture myself on the way to Dresden arriving at 2am with nowhere to stay and no money.

Fortunately everything was alright and I was on the way to Prague and nothing worse happened.

I was so tired and pissed off from the series of mishaps over the day but it was not that big of a deal. Everything had gone smoothly the whole trip so I knew sometime something would happen.

But just don't let it be a big problem and keep moving on and then one day you will look back and laugh!

Mark Teramae. Mark is a regular contributor on the Eurotrip.com discussion boards

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